Excerpt
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): Negotiations dragged on for nearly 36 hours past the deadline in Durban, South Africa.
In the end, leaders at the 17th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change mostly agreed to keep talking. Among the decisions they did make, the delegates extended the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, set to expire at the end of 2012, for five years, called for a new binding accord to be created and ready to be implemented by 2020, and set up a Green Climate Fund. It would use public and private money to help developing nations combat the impacts of climate change.
Here to discuss what came out of Durban and the future of global climate talks are Nathan Hultman, director of environmental policy for the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. He is also a fellow at the Brookings Institution and was in Durban for the conference. And Samuel Thernstrom, senior climate policy adviser for the Clean Air Task Force, a non-profit group dedicated to reducing air pollution through private sector collaboration, among other things. He is a former member of the White House Council on Environmental Quality during the George W. Bush administration.
COMMENT: We mere humans cannot stop climate change but we do have to start to address the expected financial, economic, and political consequences globally. At this time there are some impacts in the environment already in progress; like unusual weather patterns, rising sea levels, disappearing glaciers, long-term drouths, etc.
No comments:
Post a Comment